Cleveland mapper says hello !

skorasaurus

Posted 22 November 2011 - 09:15 AM

skorasaurus

Contributor

Validated Member

41 posts

Gender:Not Telling

Location:Cleveland, OH, United States

United States

How do you do ?

I'm Will. Late last year, I began creating a map of Cleveland's neighborhoods (I'll be posting it shortly for your feedback). I don't have any formal training in GIS/cartography and have learned by some reading, trial and error, and recently, some reading (I found Gretchen Peterson's book last week and it has some great advice and filled in some holes for me - and I see she's here on cartotalk !

I started mapping the neighborhoods of Cleveland by contributing to openstreetmap (primarily updating roads, POIs - place of interests), and using that data as a basis for my map and my interest has grown. I'm using a combination of mapnik and osmarender (openstreetmap rendering software), tilemill, and the gimp to create maps [for print and online].

As of now, I'm primarily interested in mapping urban areas and providing ways for people to understand their city and neighborhoods. I'm also a proponent of open data, giving people (especially fellow cartographers) easy (and inexpensive) access to public government datasets like park locations, shapefiles of local land parcels, etc.

I've lurked the forums a bit in the past day or 2 and all of you are very knowledgeable and reading here has been very informative, especially the business of cartography board !